Stephen R. Covey: 7 essential quotes to commemorate his life

Named one of Time magazine’s 25 most influential Americans, Stephen R. Covey, bestselling author of the self-help book "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People," worked to help individuals discover how they can be more effective by making conscious decisions as to how they will respond, act, and think. More than 25 million copies of "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" have been sold worldwide since its publication in 1989, but Covey was insistent that what he taught was not original but rather was based on “universal principles” and mostly “common sense” – he credited himself only with laying the material out. Covey held a Master of Business Administration from Harvard University and spent the majority of his career teaching at Brigham Young University as a professor of organizational behavior and business management. In 1997, Covey co-founded Franklin-Covey, a leadership development organization that aims to help individuals and organizations improve through coaching, mentoring, workshops, and assessment services based on Covey’s principles. It is the largest management and leadership development organization in the world.

1. Our world view

Photo: Steve C. Wilson, AP

“We see the world, not as it is, but as we are – or, as we are conditioned to see it.” 

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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